Supersymmetric Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models

Abstract

We discuss a supersymmetric generalization of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. These are quantum mechanical models involving $N$ Majorana fermions. The supercharge is given by a polynomial expression in terms of the Majorana fermions with random coefficients. The Hamiltonian is the square of the supercharge. The $\mathcal{N}=1$ model with a single supercharge has unbroken supersymmetry at large $N$, but nonperturbatively spontaneously broken supersymmetry in the exact theory. We analyze the model by looking at the large $N$ equation, and also by performing numerical computations for small values of $N$. We also compute the large $N$ spectrum of ``singlet'' operators, where we find a structure qualitatively similar to the ordinary SYK model. We also discuss an $\mathcal{N}=2$ version. In this case, the model preserves supersymmetry in the exact theory and we can compute a suitably weighted Witten index to count the number of ground states, which agrees with the large $N$ computation of the entropy. In both cases, we discuss the supersymmetric generalizations of the Schwarzian action which give the dominant effects at low energies.